The Road to Ph.D.: A Scoping Review of Psychosocial Climate for Doctoral Students in Africa

This review explores evidence concerning psychosocial climate and experiences of doctoral students who study in academic and research institutions in Africa. The journey through doctoral training can be difficult with various psychosocial experiences, some of which could force candidates to either progress slowly or abandon their studies altogether. Therefore, providing critical insights to psychosocial climate of doctoral journey may be important to providing measured academic or training atmosphere for producing critical minds and national development-oriented graduates. This is a literature synthesis that applied the guidelines of Arksey and O’Malley’s and PRISMA-ScR. We searched for relevant articles from PubMed, ProQuest, Taylor & Francis Online, Google Scholar, and Science Direct into this review. Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and upon thorough screening, 21 published articles were included in this review. We found high levels of anxiety and depression among doctoral students in Africa. Accordingly, mental health conditions are due to high workload, harassment and poor student-supervisor relationships, among others. The students also experience challenges with supervisor-student relationship, among financial difficulties, which are lead to other mental health problems, and delaying students’ rate of completion. Therefore, creating a conducive academic environment becomes a panacea for a successful training of quality doctoral students for national development.